Sunday, September 4, 2011

Maui - my new best thing

Paul and I are in Maui. This might just be my new favourite place to visit.

Side note --> a lot of the pictures loaded sideways. Sorry, that's just the way it is. To see them properly, right click on those images and save to your computer. When you open them from there you will be able to rotate.

Also, you can click on any of the images and a larger version will open in a new window with more detail.

Our view is not bad.

Here is what has gone down so far.

Day 1:

We spent most of the first day at Kahekili Beach Park. It is only a five minute walk down the beach from our hotel and it has calm, clear water and is fantastic for snorkeling. Despite the fact that all three of our books list this as the best beach in all of Maui, it seems to mostly be populated by locals. Most of the tourists stick to the big beaches and for most of the morning we had the entire place to ourselves. Decent.

Sunset run.

Day 2:
Today we woke up at 6:30 to head to the north part of the island. The Road to Hana is a crazy highway that is super narrow and twisty. It's also one of the main tourists attractions, but we decided to skip it because it means spending an entire day in the car. Nevertheless, we ended up taking the Hana Highway for a while this morning to end up at our hike.

It was early in the morning and pouring rain when we arrived. That turned out to be a good thing because we ended up having this amazing spot to ourselves.

The trail head: 6/10ths of a mile past mile marker 6 at a small turnout with a wire fence. Kind of like the entrance to the wizarding world in Harry Potter, this would be impossible to spot if you weren't specifically looking for it.

The first part of the trail was through a bamboo forest.

There were four waterfalls on the hike. There was some climbing involved to get to the second one. This climbing later turned out to be insignificant compared to what was to come.

The second waterfall. Sweet.

Right before this is when the sketchy climbing happened. A 12 metre sheer rock face with some dodgey ropes and a rickety old ladder to make it up. Yikes. This is Paul at the top of the second waterfall.

Eventually we got to a point where the trail seemed to disappear. I tried to follow it up. This turned out to not be correct.

The reason my climbing turned out to be incorrect was that to get to the next part of the trail you actually had to get in and swim. So, that's what we did.

Paul swimming.

The swimming is done, so the hard part must be over, right? Wrong. The last obstacle is the third waterfall - which you have to scale. Luckily, we had our Roclite 230s on (which were also good for swimming).

Now Paul climbs.

At the top of the third waterfall, looking back on where we just swam. We came from around that corner.

This is why is was all worthwhile. Amazing.

Now Paul swims.

Here we are!

Graceful.

This place is cool.

Now Paul swims again.

One last look. The fact that we had this whole place to our self makes no sense at all.